1 


7 


LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


http://www.archive.org/details/worldslincolnOOdrin 


THE 
WORLD'S  LINCOLN 

By 

JOHN  DRINKWATER 


NEW  YORK 

THE  BOWLING  GREEN  PRESS 

I928 


COPYRIGHT  I928  BY 
THE  BOWLING  GREEN  PRESS,  INC. 


PRINTED  IN  THE  U.  S.  A. 


/  I      w*  .        '      >*--»     MS    »> 


THE  WORLD'S  LINCOLN 


at* 


d* 


CIENTIFIC  accuracy  is,  &  right- 
ly, dear  to  the  heart  of  the  mod- 
ern  historian;  and  yet,  the  more 
we  study  history,  the  more  diffi- 
cult of  attainment  does  it  seem  to 
be.  When  all  the  archives  have 
been  ransacked,  and  every  document  scrutinised  to 
the  last  flourish  of  a  letter,  how  little,  we  realise,  is 
known  of  the  literal  fads  after  all,  how  much  of  high 
significance  in  chara&er  and  event  has  escaped  the 
most  patient  investigation.  No  tale  of  things  that 
actually  came  to  pass  on  earth  is  ever  even  half  told, 
and  the  stoutest  record  would  seem  hardly  more 
than  a  marginal  note  if  we  knew  all. 

And,  scanty  as  our  information  maybe,  how  sel- 
dom are  we  sure  that  even  so  little  is  indisputable. 
Figures  of  distant  ages,  greatly  notable  in  their  day, 
and  freely  noted  by  the  chroniclers,  survive  mostly 

i  5   > 


in  very  doubtful  fidelity  to  the  originals,  and  figures 
notable  for  all  time  are  often  indistind  almost  to  the 
point  of  invisibility.  Would  it  not  seem  to  have  been 
inconceivable  that  the  supreme  man  of  the  modern 
world,  Shakespeare,  should  within  three  hundred 
years  of  his  death  have  been  so  completely  effaced 
from  biographical  memory  that  the  new  and  author- 
itative dating  of  any  single  moment  in  his  life  would 
make  a  scholar's  reputation;  that,  indeed,  there  is  acri- 
monious debate  as  to  whether  he  ever  existed  at  all? 
It  may  well  be  that  we  are  content  to  know  no  more 
of  him  than  is  revealed  by  his  work,  but  it  is  none  the 
less  a  miracle  that  Shakespeare  the  man  has  become 
no  more  than  a  spedral  surmise. 

But  even  where  the  witnesses  have  been  diligent, 
more  than  much  remains  in  obscurity.  Boswell  on 
Johnson  and  Pepys  on  himself  tell  us  a  great  deal  that 
is  significant,  but  their  copious  notes  leave  untold 
more  than  they  tell.  It  must  inevitably  be  so.  The  full 
story  of  a  man's  life  would  take  as  long  to  read  as  to 
live,  and  twenty  times  as  long  to  write.  The  amplest 
compilation  of  fads,  say  Lockhart  on  Scott  or  Moore 
on  Byron,  amounts  at  last  to  a  slight  and  more  or  less 
fortuitous  seledion.  Far  from  being  regrettable,  this 
is  fortunate;  but  it  is  a  fad. 

If,  however,  it  is  remarkable  that  our  knowledge 

i  6  > 


of  a  poet  who  lived  three  hundred  years  ago  should 
be  sparse  and  unreliable,  it  is  far  more  so  that  there 
should  be  doubt  and  difficulty  about  the  lives  of  men 
who  were  figures  of  close  public  attention  within  liv- 
ing memory.  But  such  doubt  and  difficulty  there  are. 
Popular  conceptions  of  great  men  who  a  generation 
ago  were  the  staple  of  daily  news,  founded  apparent- 
ly on  secure  evidence,  are  continually  being  chal- 
lenged, sometimes  wantonly,  sometimes  in  good 
faith.  The  virtues  of  common  report  were,  it  seems, 
but  the  cloak  of-sad  infirmities  after  all;  the  loyalty 
was  carefully  disposed  by  self-interest;  the  chivalry 
was  lewd  at  heart;  the  fortitude  was  arrogance;  and 
the  vision  was  false.  All  of  which  may  be  true,  or  it 
may  not.  The  challenge,  no  doubt,  is  plausibly  sup- 
ported; documents  can  be  made  to  support  anything 
if  you  have  enough  of  them  to  choose  from.  Nelson 
possibly  was  a  coward,  and  someone  may  have  evi- 
dence up  his  sleeve  to  prove  it.  But  the  important 
thing  is  not  the  assurance  that  sooner  or  later  truth 
will  out,  but  that  there  comes  a  time  when  certain 
convidions  are  so  firmly  established  that  they  be- 
come proof  against  any  spe&acular  revelations,  be- 
come, that  isy  the  potent  truth  itself,  no  matter  what 
excavation  of  fads  may  threaten  it.  If  a  seled  com- 
mittee of  the  High  Courts  of  the  world  were  to  de- 

i  7  > 


cide  on  an  impartial  examination  of  the  evidence  that 
Nelson  was  a  coward,  we  should  laugh  in  their  faces. 

♦ 

No  public  man  in  the  western  world  during  the 
past  seventy  years  or  so  has  been  more  minutely  ob- 
served  than  Abraham  Lincoln.  History  hardly  af- 
fords so  striking  an  instance  of  a  man  taking  on  an 
epic  significance  while  the  daily  habit  of  his  life  is  still 
a  matter  of  familiar  recolle&ion.  And  yet  already  the 
story  of  Lincoln  is  the  subjed  of  historical  disputa- 
tion. Not  only  is  he  the  great  American,  the  beloved 
symbol  in  which  a  nation  of  over  a  hundred  million 
people  sees  itself  exalted ;  he  is  also  accepted  by  the 
world,  or  by  the  western  world  at  any  rate,  as  a  states- 
man  by  whom  office  was  dignified  with  an  almost 
unexampled  splendour  of  chara&er.  Such  a  one,  it 
might  have  been  supposed,  would  have  been  present- 
ed to  us  with  absolute  authority,  with  an  assurance 
of  mood  and  feature  that  none  could  call  in  question. 
A  man  so  deeply  contemplated  and  so  devoutly  es- 
teemed must  surely  stand  before  us  at  least  precisely 
for  what  he  isy  with  no  hesitancy  of  countenance  or 
obscured  definition.  The  more  so  when,  as  with  Lin- 
coln, the  records  of  all  kinds  are  so  plentiful  and  elab- 
orate. Photographers,  draughtsmen,  diarists,  biog- 
raphers official  and  unofficial,  state  reporters,  poets, 

i  8  > 


novelists,  historians,  generals  and  cabinet  ministers, 
from  all  these  we  have  a  vast  accumulation  of  testi- 
mony as  to  the  very  feature  and  character  of  Lincoln. 
And  the  testimony  is  supplemented  by  an  a&ive  pop- 
ular tradition  based  largely  on  personal  conta&s.  The 
man  who  has  already  taken  his  place  among  the  uni- 
versal figures  was  the  friend  of  men  still  living,  and  at 
the  distance  of  a  single  generation  is  in  intimate  asso- 
ciation with,  I  suppose,  hundreds  of  American  fami- 
lies. I  have  remarked  elsewhere  on  the  emotion  with 
which  a  stranger  may  thus  find  himself  within  a  step 
of  the  a&ual  presence  of  a  hero  almost  fabulous  in 
stature,  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  he  still  is  in  familiar  con- 
versation. I  myself  have  sat  talking  with  his  son 
in  a  room  overlooking  the  Potomac,  the  river  that 
was  the  material  token  of  a  division  that  went  near 
to  breaking  the  father's  heart.  In  my  copy  of  a  book 
called  'Personal  Recolle&ions  of  Abraham  Lincoln' 
there  is  written  the  following  inscription:  'The  Au- 
thor, in  his  83rd  autumn,  with  tender,  grateful,  rev- 
erent memories,  writes  these  lines  for  John  Drink- 
water  with  the  hand  that  often  clasped  Abraham  Lin- 
coln's. Henry  B.  Rankin,  Springfield,  Illinois,  O&ober 
20th,  1 9 1 9/  Mr.  Rankin  was  in  Herndon's  law  office 
at  Springfield  when  Lincoln  was  a  partner.  In  North 
Dakota  I  met  an  old  man,  physically  &  mentally  alert, 

{  9  } 


who  had  been  one  of  Lincoln's  bodyguard  for  the  two 
years  preceding  the  assassination  at  Ford's  Theatre; 
his  lifelong  regret  was  that  he  had  been  away  on  leave 
on  the  fatal  evening,  when  who  knows  but  what  he 
might  have  given  a  different  turn  to  American  his- 
tory.  And  these  experiences  are  common  in  the  land 
where  so  short  a  time  ago  Lincoln  came  and  went 
with  all  the  frank  accessibility  of  a  democratic  socie- 
ty. The  evidence  by  which  we  know  him  is  volumi- 
nous, precise,  and  vivid.  From  that  evidence  a  figure 
has  been  created  that  has  seized  the  imagination  of 
mankind,  and  it  is  beyond  all  cavil  a  figure  of  truth. 
And  yet  the  truth,  this  truth  so  commanding  that  it 
can  never  now  be  obliterated  from  the  consciousness 
of  our  race,  is  at  not  rare  intervals  contested  by  eager 
investigators  who  hope  by  a  myopic  concentration 
on  insignificant  fads  to  discredit  a  larger  verity  than 
they  know.  Before  considering  what  this  verity  is}  let 
us  for  a  moment  see  how  these  misguided  enthusi- 
asts can  vex  themselves. 

Now  and  again  I  receive  a  pamphlet  of  Historical 
7<[otes  by  the  courtesy  of  a  Georgian  lady  who  com- 
piles them.  Miss  Rutherford  is  a  very  industrious  stu- 
dent, fearless  in  her  zeal,  and  genuinely  convinced  of 
the  justice  of  her  cause.  Which  is  to  show  that  Abra- 

i  io> 


ham  Lincoln,  far  from  being  the  fine  fellow  that  we 
take  him  to  be,  was  on  the  whole  a  pretty  considera- 
ble humbug.  Miss  Rutherford  is  not  the  vi&im  of  ir- 
responsible prejudices;  she  is  a  patient  gleaner  of  evi- 
dence, cherishing  over-duly  perhaps  what  should  by 
now  be  a  faded  animosity,  but  reinforcing  her  con- 
clusions scrap  by  scrap,  as  tremulously  persuaded  as 
a  Baconian  or  a  Flat-Earthist.  I  should  not  presume 
to  argue  with  Miss  Rutherford;  I  susped  that  in  any 
case  argument  is  a  region  beyond  which  she  has  ad- 
vanced. And,  further,  I  honestly  resped  the  spirit  with 
which  she  labours  a  forlorn  hope.  For  it  is  that.  She 
will  never  make  the  world  believe  that  Lincoln  was 
a  humbug.  The  world  has  by  this  time  elaborated  its 
own  truth  about  Lincoln,  and  this  truth  will  never  be 
made  to  square  with  Miss  Rutherford's  theories. 

I  seled  Historical  J<iotes  as  an  illustration  of  my  ar- 
gument for  the  very  reason  that  they  are  more  con- 
sidered in  design  than  is  usual  with  such  futilities;  I  use 
the  word,  I  hope,  without  offence.  Miss  Rutherford 
calls  her  witnesses  with  a  confidence  that  is  not  as- 
sumed, and  she  examines  them  adroitly  to  her  own 
purposes.  It  is  impossible  to  question  her  good  faith. 
She  gives  her  time  and  her  energy,  one  may  suppose 
a  considerable  amount  of  her  means  also,  to  what  for 
her  is  a  crusade  against  error.  And  she  follows  herin- 


UWVEftSrTY  OF  V 


spiration  to  remarkable  issues.  A  recent  pamphlet  in 
her  series  is  devoted  to  a  contrast  between  the  lives  of 
Jefferson  Davis  and  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  warmest 
admirer  of  Lincoln  may  still  find  much  to  resped  in 
Davis,  though  with  less,  it  may  be,  than  the  true 
Southern  fervour.  Whether  a  better  man  could  or 
could  not  have  been  found  for  an  office  that  must 
have  beenexading  beyond  almost  any  human  pow- 
ers, the  fad  remains  that  Jefferson  Davis  fell  short, 
and,  as  the  event  proved,  disastrously  short,  of  the  re- 
quirements.  But  he  had  fine  qualities  ofcharaderand 
considerable  intelledual  gifts.  Like  Lincoln,  of  an  un- 
distinguished parentage,  his  family  fortunes  rose  in 
his  youth,  and  he  became  a  prosperous  slave-owning 
cotton-planter,  who  managed  his  estate  with  acumen 
and  humanity.  Marrying  a  daughter  of  Zachary Tay- 
lor, afterwards  President  of  the  United  States,  he  him- 
self went  into  politics,  and  some  ten  years  before  the 
Civil  War  was  given  a  post  in  the  cabinet  under 
Franklin  Pierce.  For  a  time, also,  he  was  a  soldier,  train- 
ing at  the  great  American  military  academy  at  West 
Point  at  the  same  time  as  Robert  E.  Lee,  and  served 
with  no  little  distindion  in  the  Mexican  War  of 
1 846.  So  that  he  was  clearly  a  man  of  parts,  one  who 
in  many  of  his  enterprises  was  happy  in  crowning 
ability  with  success.  As  he  showed  in  the  great  crisis 

i  12  J 


of  his  life,  he  had  a  fortitude  that  may  almost  be  said 
to  have  amounted  to  greatness,  but  he  was  not  a  great 
man  in  the  constructive  sense  that  would  have  been 
necessary  for  any  leader  who  should  bring  the  South 
through  to  the  establishment  of  a  desperate  cause. 
Unlike  Lincoln,  who  always  chose  the  best  man  for 
service  irrespedive  of  personal  considerations,  Davis 
was  continually  swayed  in  his  choice  by  affedions 
and  antipathies,  and,  although  this  may  have  indi- 
cated personal  loyalty,  it  meant,  since  Davis  was  a 
very  imperfed  judge  of  charader  and  susceptible  to 
flattery,  continual  political  &  military  instability  that 
ended  in  disaster  for  the  South.  Above  all,  Davis  had 
none  of  the  personal  magnetism  that  could  sway  the 
ardours  of  a  people  in  revolution.  He  was  a  recluse  by 
habit,  scholarly,  introspedive,  neurasthenic.  He  was 
a  brave  patriot,  with  an  acutely  analytical  mind,  but 
he  had  none  of  the  genius  necessary  to  inspire  leader- 
ship  in  a  great  adventure.  His  fatal  defed,  indeed,  in 
such  a  man  at  such  a  time,  was  a  complete  absence  of 
the  adventurous  spirit.  The  Southern  material  was 
magnificent,  but  it  needed  heroic  magnetism  of  the 
first  order  to  dired  it.  Such  magnetism  was  found  in 
Lee's  military  command  of  the  Virginian  army,  but  it 
was  not  for  a  moment  present  in  Davis's  control  of 
Confederate  policy  and  strategy  as  a  whole.  One  of 


the  supremely  tragic  aspedts  of  the  Confederate  story 
was,  indeed,  the  sub  jedion  of  Lee,  who  had  it,  to  Davis 
who  had  it  not,  and  Lee's  superb  forbearance  in  a  sit- 
uation  of  the  deepest  irony. 


♦ 


That  is  the  impression  of  Jefferson  Davis  left  af- 
ter an  impartial  study  of  records.  It  is  easy  to  under- 
stand Miss  Rutherford's  tenderness  for  the  man  who 
after  all  was  the  nominated  leader  of  a  cause  that  went 
splendidly  to  failure,  and  suffered  so  profoundly  him- 
self in  its  overthrow.  It  is  easy  also  to  sympathise  with 
her  and  those  who  feel  like  her.  To  recognise  Davis's 
limitations  is  not  to  fail  in  appreciation  of  much  in 
him  that  approached  nobility.  But  for  his  friends  to 
contrast  him  with  Lincoln  is  an  incomprehensible 
blunder  in  advocacy.  For  Lincoln,  the  Lincoln  that  we 
know  and  that  the  world  will  always  know, was  great- 
ly eminent  in  the  qualities  that  Davis  lacked. This  has 
now  been  decided  by  a  consensus  of  opinion  against 
which  it  is  no  longer  of  any  use  to  appeal.  The  whole 
story  might  have  been  written  differently,  but  it  has 
in  fadl  been  written  so,and  it  is  too  late  to  alter  it.  Not 
all  Miss  Rutherford's  sagacity  nor  anyone  else's  can 
rob  us  of  the  Lincoln  that  time  has  already  shaped  for 
the  encouragement  of  mankind.  She  may  call  her  wit- 
nesses with  the  nicest  preparation,  but  she  will  con- 


tinue  to  call  them  in  vain.  Here  they  parade  before  us 
in  Historical  ?<[otes  Volume  II  Number  2,  and  the  evi- 
dence  that  they  give  the  court  is  as  follows.  'Lincoln 
was  a  traitor  to  the  constitution.'  We  need  not  be  too 
hard  on  that,  remembering  what  the  prejudices  are. 
But  these:  'He  never  answered  a  dired  question,  but 
always  evaded  it/ '  He  was  naturally  envious.'  He  was 
'cruel  and  vindidive.'  'His  cunning  amounted  to  gen- 
ius.'  'He  did  nothing  for  mere  gratitude  &  forgot  the 
devotion  of  his  warmest  friends  as  soon  as  the  occa- 
sion for  their  services  had  passed.'  'He  had  no  rever- 
ence  for  great  men.'  And  then,  triumphantly,  'His 
views  of  human  nature  were  very  low,'  and  'He  had 
no  heart.' 

These  opinions,  it  may  be  observed,  are  not  ad- 
vanced  by  Miss  Rutherford  as  her  own  at  random. 
She  endorses  them,  her  whole  objed  being,  indeed, 
to  make  them  current;  but  they  are  drawn  from  her 
survey  of  acknowledged  authorities,  among  them 
Herndon,  Lamon  &  Seward.  None  of  these  was,  per- 
haps, wholly  candid  in  representing  Lincoln,  or  shall 
we  say  perspicuous.  Herndon  loved  his  law-partner, 
but  he  had  a  somewhat  befuddled  if  generous  mind, 
and  was  not  a  notably  sensitive  judge  of  charader. 
Ward  Hill  Lamon  knew  Lincoln  well  so  far  as  he 
knew  him  at  all,  but  he  was  unaware  of  the  deeps  and 

i  15  > 


horizons  that  have  gone  to  the  making  of  a  wo  rid  -sto- 
ry. 'Eater  and  drinker/  Mr.  Carl  Sandburg  calls  him, 
'with  a  swagger  of  a  pi&ure-book  swashbuckler  out  of 
a  pirate  story,  but  a  personal  loyalty  of  tried  fighting 
quality/  The  moods  in  which  Lincoln  had  no  use  for 
him,  when  he  was  withdrawn  into  speculation  that  his 
vivid  young  companion — Lamon  was  Lincoln's  jun- 
ior by  nineteen  years — could  not  share,  would  read- 
ily be  accounted  to  vanity,  spiritual  gloom,  some- 
thing formidable  even  to  the  point  of '  vindi&iveness 
and  cruelty/ Seward  was  an  accomplished  gentleman, 
who  once  he  had  tried  a  fall  with  his  chief  served  him 
loyally  as  Secretary  of  State,  but  there  was  always  the 
lurking  disappointment  that  not  he  but  an  uncouth 
small-town  man  from  the  obscure  west  was  Presi- 
dent. He  behaved,  once  he  had  pulled  himself  togeth- 
er, very  well  about  it,  but  it  is  no  matter  for  surprise 
that  a  tell-tale  word  should  now  and  then  slip  out  in 
private  talk  or  correspondence,  or  even  in  notes  made 
for  future  use.  So  that  Miss  Rutherford's  witnesses, 
even  in  her  own  court,  might  be  hard  enough  pressed 
incross-examination.The  significant  thing,  however, 
is  that  it  is  from  these  very  sources,  and  from  others 
of  the  same  nature,  that  the  Lincoln  of  common  ac- 
ceptance has  been  evolved.  Herndon  &  Lamon  and 
Seward  and  the  rest  of  them  may  no  doubt  in  care- 

£  16  J 


fully  seledled  detail  be  quoted  to  any  purpose,  but  if 
we  take  their  testimony  without  selection,  as  we 
ought,  we  find  that  the  only  purpose  that  it  can  by 
any  means  be  made  to  serve  is  utterly  removed  from 
Miss  Rutherford's. The  world  has  made  its  own  fig- 
ure of  Lincoln,  as  it  does  of  every  great  man.  In  do- 
ing this  it  may  have  disregarded  or  been  unaware  of 
aspeds  that  such  scrutiny  as  Miss  Rutherford's  may 
discover,  but  this  is  of  no  consequence.  In  literal  fad 
Lincoln  was  doubtless  as  far  short  of  perfection  as 
other  men,  but  the  blemishes  that  he  had  in  com- 
mon with  his  fellows  do  not  concern  us.  Intelledual 
preciosity  sometimes  pretends  that  candour  desires 
to  know  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but 
the  truth  about  its  heroes.  I  dissent.  The  peccadillos 
and  infirmities  of  the  great  may  make  entertaining 
and  harmless  gossip;  it  may  even  be  amusing  to 
some  to  know  that  Dr.  Johnson  affeded  dirty  linen. 
But  dirty  linen  on  Dr.  Johnson  is  of  no  more  interest 
than  it  is  elsewhere,  and  to  see  some  profound  signi- 
ficance in  his  choice  is  to  see  what  isn't  there. The  Dr. 
Johnson  that  matters  does  not  include  the  dirty  lin- 
en, &  to  insist  upon  it  in  the  name  of  truth  is  in  that 
name  to  make  oneself  a  prig.  We  all  know  that  in 
Lincoln's  nature  there  must  have  been  furtive  little 
corruptions,  since  he  was  human.  But  we  can  dis- 

i  17  > 


pense  with  information  on  that  score,  it  being  so 
much  more  readily  to  hand  in  ourselves  if  we  want  it. 
But  there  was  something  in  Lincoln  also  that  is  never 
readily  to  hand,  that  is  manifested  only  at  long  inter- 
vals in  the  affairs  of  men,  something  that  was  very 
well  known  to  Herndon,  Lamon,  Seward  and  the 
others,  something  that  from  their  records  is  now 
firmly  fixed  in  the  world's  mind  forever.  Not  from 
their  records  only,  for  while  the  figure  that  we  know 
may  take  no  account  of  trivialities  that  being  true 
were  yet  of  no  advantage  to  the  truth  that  matters,  it 
is  none  the  less  founded  on  reality.  And  that  reality 
comes  to  us  by  reports  that  were  conceived  not  fan- 
tastically, but  under  the  discipline  of  the  original  him- 
self. It  is  important  to  remember  this.  The  figure  that 
we  know  may  not  coincide  in  all  respeds  with  the  or- 
iginal of  literal  fad,  but  it  has  been  fashioned  from  re- 
ports, written  and  oral,  upon  which  that  original  had 
on  the  whole  impressed  itself  faithfully.  If,  as  we  say, 
Miss  Rutherford's  witnesses  &  others  had  said  in  the 
main  the  sort  of  thing  about  Lincoln  that  she  seleds 
for  her  purpose,  we  should  be  justified  in  supposing 
him  to  have  been  little  better  than  poor  white  trash. 
But  in  that  case  our  universal  figure  could  never  have 
come  into  being.The  fad  isy  however,  that  the  witnes- 
ses did  not  say  this  sort  of  thing  in  the  main;  they  said  it 

c[i8> 


exceptionally.  What  they  said  in  the  main  was  some- 
thing  as  far  removed  from  this  sort  of  thing  as  possi- 
ble. And  for  saying  it  their  authority  was  Lincoln.  In 
other  words,  the  veritable  Lincoln  was  himself  the 
chief  collaborator  in  the  Lincoln  that  the  world  now 
accepts.  We  may  not  know  everything,  but  we  know 
all  that  we  need  to  know,  and  we  are  confident  that 
what  we  know  is  truth.  And  we  are  not  enlightened 
by  learning  that  Lincoln  too  could  stumble.  We  did 
not  suppose  that  it  could  have  been  otherwise.  But 
the  Lincoln  who  means  so  much  to  us  is  notable  for 
his  firm  gait.  Let  us  see  who  this  Lincoln  is. 

The  publication  of  Mr.  Carl  Sandburgs  Prairie 
Tears  has,  I  think,  for  the  first  time  given  Lincoln  his 
full  epic  stature.  Not  quite  this,  perhaps,  since  Mr. 
Sandburg  calls  a  halt  in  his  story,  temporarily  it  is  to 
be  hoped,  at  the  point  where  his  hero  was  ele&ed  to 
the  Presidency.  But  otherwise,  here  is  a  final  answer 
to  all  Miss  Rutherfords.  Here  we  see  what  is  the  effedt 
of  an  illimitably  painstaking  study  of  every  available 
scrap  of  evidence  upon  a  finely  creative  mind  pledged 
to  the  truth.  To  have  read  this  book  is  not  merely  to 
agree  with  it,  but  to  know  with  certainty  that  a  story 
so  passionately  explored  and  told  cannot  by  any  per- 
verse ingenuity  be  attributed  to  error.  This  indisputa- 

i  19  J 


bly  is  the  truth.  And  it  is  truth  of  a  loving  and  mag- 
nificent asped. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  born  of  pioneer  parents  on 
February  1 2th,  1 809,  in  a  log  cabin  with  a  dirt  floor 
at  Hodgenville,  Kentucky,  grew  up  in  an  environ- 
ment at  once  stark  and  romantic.  Almost  from  baby- 
hood he  had  to  pay  his  shot  by  incessant  and  heavy 
manual  labour,  picking  up  a  little  elementary  educa- 
tion at  a  school  that  was  a  log  hut  like  his  own  home. 
The  Lincolns  had  to  win  their  living  dire&ly  from 
the  earth;  favourable  weather  meant  a  wooden  bowl 
regularly  filled,  a  bad  season  meant  hunger  and  pen- 
ury. When  he  was  seven  years  old,  the  boy  Abraham 
moved  with  his  family  to  Little  Pigeon  Creek  in  the 
newly  chartered  territory  of  Indiana,  and  here  a  foot- 
ing was  hewn  and  lopped  out  of  virgin  woodland,  an- 
other log  home  built,  and  the  larder  supplied  with 
game  from  the  countryside  until  the  scantling  farm, 
granted  with  clear  title  by  the  government  at  two  dol- 
lars an  acre,  could  begin  to  show  its  yield.  The  next 
year  Abraham's  mother,  known  to  history  as  Nancy 
Hanks,  died,  &  two  years  later  his  father  had  married 
again,  bringing  a  widow,  Sarah  Bush  Johnston,  to  pre- 
side over  his  precarious  little  establishment  and  look 
after  his  two  children,  whose  numbers  were  now  aug- 
mented by  three  of  her  own  by  her  first  marriage.  Her 

{20} 


name  is  a  fragrant  memory  in  the  story  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.  As  he  came  on  to  man's  years  and  some- 
times fell  adreaming  at  his  work,  it  was  she  who  told 
them  to  let  Abe  go  his  own  way  as  it  was  like  to  prove 
as  good  a  way  as  another's.  Not  that  his  dreaming 
made  any  serious  inroads  on  his  efficiency,  but  the 
frontiersmen  of  a  new  world  are  strangely  intolerant 
of  oddness,  and  to  his  hard-driven  companions  the 
young  man  who  sometimes  went  mooning  about 
seemed  a  little  odd.  For  the  rest,  he  was  a  natural  born 
hand-worker,  with  a  lean  whipcord  physique  that 
could  easily  hold  its  own  in  any  work  or  horseplay 
that  was  on  hand.  He  could  be  gentle,  but  he  was  nev- 
er soft.  The  humours  of  that  pioneer  society  could 
take  a  rough,  sometimes  even  a  cruel  turn,  and  there  is 
nothing  to  show  that  he  was  more  squeamish  than 
the  others,  though  he  had  a  sense  of  fair  play  to  tem- 
per extravagance.  Nothing  of  a  bully,  he  never  de- 
clined a  challenge  if  he  thought  the  odds  were  any- 
thing like  level  for  the  other  fellow;  &  he  was  willing 
enough  to  interfere  in  any  quarrel  i(  he  thought  a 
crooked  deal  was  on.  He  began  to  read,  walking  twen- 
ty miles  out  &  home  again  to  borrow  a  book.  Friends 
in  distant  parts  of  the  territory  encouraged  him,  and 
Aesop,  Defoe  &  Bunyan  became  his  friends.  Also  he 
studied  arithmetic;  then  history.  He  began  to  be  em- 


ployed  on  errands  that  took  him  far  away  from  Tom 
Lincoln's  cabin,  trading  along  the  Mississippi  River 
down  to  New  Orleans,  where  he  saw  slave-gangs  be- 
ing dragooned  in  handcuffs,  with  consequences  that 
were  some  day  to  be  written  indelibly  on  the  history 
of  the  United  States.  By  the  time  he  was  twenty  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  was  an  athlete  who  feared  no  comers,  a 
graduate  in  the  rigours  of  necessity,  &  more  travelled 
than  most  in  his  station  of  life.  He  had,  further,  ac- 
quired enough  book-learning  to  give  him  a  name 
among  his  folk  for  being  'peculiarsome.' 

As  he  grew  to  maturity,  the  vast  middle-west  of 
which  he  was  a  native  was  teeming  with  the  fertility 
of  a  new  world.  The  spread  of  population  and  the  as- 
sembling of  races,  the  organisation  of  finance  and  the 
coming  of  the  railroads,  the  ramifications  of  slavery 
and  abolition,  the  drama  of  men  and  women  looking 
westward  into  the  wilderness  and  eastward  to  old  civ- 
ilisations, the  quarrels  of  politicians  and  the  visions 
of  statesmen,  these  were  matters  that  absorbed  the 
grown  boy's  mind.  Then  he  found  a  copy  of  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  with  it  sundry 
other  documents  concerned  with  Law.  Another  trip 
to  New  Orleans,  &  further  opportunity  for  meditat- 
ing on  the  sale  of  human  beings,  and  in  1 83 1  we  find 
him,  independent  now  of  home  &  family,  serving  in 


a  store  at  New  Salem  in  Sangamon  County,  Illinois. 

Here  he  at  once  acquired  a  reputation  for  integrity 
and  force  of  chara&er,  and  was  soon  a  conspicuous 
figure  in  the  little  township.  He  was  fighting  hard 
with  life,  terribly  determined  to  keep  square  with  his 
conscience.  When  he  gave  a  woman  customer  in  the 
store  six  and  a  half  cents  short  in  change  he  walked 
six  miles  in  his  own  time  to  repair  the  mistake.  Here 
he  led  a  company  of  volunteers  as  Captain  against  the 
Indians  in  the  Black  Hawk  War.  His  men  fought  hard 
but  told  him  to  go  to  hell  when  he  gave  orders  off 
the  field.  And  it  was  here  that  he  met  and  loved  Anne 
Rutledge,  was  engaged  to  her,  and  watched  her  die  of 
fever,agirlof  twentytwo  whose  name  has  taken  on 
a  lyric  beauty  for  ever,  a  beauty  exquisitely  captured 
by  Edgar  Lee  Masters  in — 

Out  of  me  unworthy  and  unknown 
The  vibrations  of  deathless  music; 


I  am  Anne  Rutledge  who  sleep  beneath 

these  weeds, 
Beloved  in  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 
Wedded  to  him,  not  through  union, 


i*3> 


But  through  separation. 
Bloom  forever,  O  Republic, 
From  the  dust  of  my  bosom! 

As  she  was  dying,  says  Mr.  Sandburg,  Lincoln  rode 
out  to  her  farm.  'They  let  him  in;  they  left  the  two 
together  and  alone  a  last  hour  in  the  log  house,  with 
slants  of  light  on  her  face  from  an  open  clapboard 
door/  The  memory  of  that  hour  was  a  sorrow  that 
never  lost  its  passion. 

It  was  in  New  Salem  too  that  Lincoln  first  began 
to  take  part  in  local  politics,  and  found,  in  a  heap  of 
rubbish,  a  copy  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries  on  the 
Laws  of  England,  with  the  results  that  he  got  him' 
self  ele&ed  to  the  Illinois  Legislature,  and  became  a 
lawyer.  In  1837  he  opened  a  law  office  in  Spring- 
field on  a  capital  of  seven  dollars,  and  in  debt  to  the 
tune  of  another  thousand  that  he  had  borrowed 
from  friends,  who  thought  him  peculiarsome  but  had 
a  faith  that  somehow  he  would  pay  them  back,  which 
he  did. 

For  twenty-three  years  he  lived  in  Springfield, 
prospering  in  his  profession,  becoming  more  &  more 
talked  of  as  a  personality,  sometimes  eleded  for  the 
State  Legislature  and  sometimes  defeated,  and  for  a 
time  serving  as  Congressman  at  Washington.  When 


he  first  went  into  the  town  he  was  tough  in  fibre, 
properly  ambitious,  notable  as  he  joined  any  com- 
pany, and  as  likely  to  become  President  of  the  United 
States  as  the  curate  of  the  church  down  the  way  is  to 
become  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  It  is  said  that  he 
told  friends  with  some  seriousness  that  he  intended 
to  go  to  the  White  House.  Doubtless  some  thous- 
ands of  young  men  had  the  same  intention.  But  it  is 
an  impressive  thought  that  at  all  times,  even  to-day, 
while  the  thousands  are  cherishing  this  illusion,  two 
or  three  of  them  will  thirty  years  or  so  hence  prove 
against  all  the  odds  that  it  was  no  illusion  after  all.  It 
is  like  a  sweepstake;  in  a  million  people  someone  has 
got  to  bring  off  a  million  to  one  chance.  If  Lincoln  did 
make  the  boast,  he  was  going  to  be  justified,  but  in 
1837  and  for  twenty  years  after  there  was  not  the 
smallest  probability  that  he  would  be. 


* 


And  yet  the  Springfield  days  were  an  ordered  pro- 
bation. The  imaginative,  which  is  not  the  fanciful, 
mind,  contemplating  Lincoln's  place  in  history,  is  apt 
to  see  the  man  coming  forward  from  obscurity  to  di- 
red  his  country's  fortunes  at  a  supreme  crisis.  In  a 
sense  it  is  true  of  Lincoln  as  it  is  of  Cromwell  that  the 
hour  made  the  man,  and  the  imagination  is  rightly 
moved  by  ordinances  so  unexpectedly  asserted.  The 

€*5  J 


elevation  of  men  like  these,  at  a  sudden  call,  from  nar- 
row  local  influence  to  national  power  may  well  seem 
to  be  divinely  appointed,  and  is  a  theme  that  has  al- 
ways stirred  the  poets.  But  close  investigation  gener- 
ally  reveals  a  preparation  which,  if  it  was  by  no  means 
likely  to  lead  to  such  an  event,  was  necessary  if  the 
event  was  to  be  possible.  And  so  it  was  with  Lincoln. 
The  obscure  pioneer  politician  whom  we  see  emerg- 
ing from  the  recesses  of  Illinois  in  i860  to  take  con- 
trol at  Washington,  &  after  five  years  of  authority  to 
make  an  end  leaving  a  name  sweetly  memorable  for 
ever,  may  assume  the  character  of  a  god  out  of  the 
machine.  But  if  so,  he  comes  fully  armed  with  experi- 
ence patiently  acquired  during  those  twenty  years  on 
the  Springfield  circuit.  His  mind  has  been  disciplined 
in  pra&ical  knowledge  of  law  and  institutions,  in  de- 
bate, in  understanding  the  needs  of  a  hardy  young 
community  spreading  with  startling  rapidity  over  a 
vast  continent.  He  has  learnt,  too,  a  great  deal  about 
men,  how  to  suffer  fools  at  least  until  he  is  sure  that 
nothing  can  bring  them  to  a  sense  of  their  folly,  how 
to  accommodate  difficulties,  how  to  respedl  the  oth- 
er point  of  view,  and  how  to  tell  honesty  from  feign- 
ing. Above  all,  he  has  already  accustomed  his  heart 
to  the  charity  for  all  that' is  presently  to  be  his  last  and 
loveliest  challenge  against  darkness. 

$2.6} 


It  was  at  Springfield  that  Lincoln  married  Mary 
Todd,  he  then  being  thirty-three  years  of  age.  That 
his  heart  was  ever  greatly  in  the  enterprise  we  may 
doubt,butMary  Lincoln  could  help  her  husband  with 
sound  advice  on  occasion,  and  displaying  herself  as 
she  believed  to  much  advantage  at  the  White  House, 
has  taken  a  less  conspicuous  place  in  history.  At  her 
best  she  encouraged  Lincoln  to  a  belief  in  his  own 
powers;  at  her  worst  she  was  unable  to  wear  out  his 
patience. 

The  man  ele&ed  by  the  Republican  party  to  the 
Presidency  in  i860  had  a  few  months  earlier  made 
his  appearance  before  an  audience  representing  the 
culture  and  intellect  of  the  east.  At  Cooper  Union  in 
New  York  some  fifteen  hundred  people  assembled 
while  a  snowstorm  swept  over  the  city,  and  were  as- 
tonished when  a  gaunt,  uncouth  man,  inches  over  six 
feet  in  height,  dressed  in  no  fashion,  with  enormous 
feet  and  terribly  conscious  of  his  hands,  stepped  on  to 
the  platform.  If  this  was  the  possible  candidate  pro- 
duced by  the  West  for  supreme  office,  it  must  be  al- 
lowed that  he  was  a  very  strange  one.  Culture  and  in- 
tellect were  almost  inclined  to  titter  in  spite  of  good 
breeding.  Think  of  the  Mayflower:  lines  of  long  de- 
scent. Think  of  Mr.  Seward.  But  as  Mr.Lincoln  went 
on  speaking  Mr.  Seward  seemed  to  matter  rather  less. 

4>7f 


The  mildly  disdainful  curiosity  gave  place  to  startled 
admiration.  Intelled  and  culture  needs  must  salute  a 
sincerity  so  convincing,  needs  must  see  themselves 
transfigured  in  such  homely  logic,  such  native  digni- 
ty. This  man,  authentically,  was  prophesying  before 
them.  As  he  made  an  end,  the  great  audience  forgot 
its  decorum  and  surged  up  to  the  speaker  in  waves  of 
enthusiasm.  A  new  and  grandly  incalculable  person- 
ality  had  come  into  the  national  life  of  America;  had, 
indeed,  come  into  history,  with  brief  but  imperish- 
able annals  to  be  told. 


* 


Of  Abraham  Lincoln's  Presidency  this  is  not  the 
place  to  attempt  even  a  summary,  still  less  may  we 
debate  the  political  and  martial  agony  by  which  it 
was  conditioned.  Seen  in  perspective,  heroic  resolu- 
tions always  have  the  appearance  of  sublime  simpli- 
city; to  the  participants  at  the  time  they  are  entan- 
gled often  in  a  network  of  intrigue  that  hampers  if  it 
does  not  destroy  the  heroism.  Never  have  the  con- 
fusion of  motives  &  the  shocks  of  interest  been  more 
violent  than  they  were  in  the  American  Civil  War, 
and  Lincoln,  as  all  other  public  men,  was  charged 
with  every  kind  of  malice  and  duplicity.  His  distinc- 
tion lay  in  the  fad  that  in  common  circumstances 
he  conduced  himself  in  no  common  way.  For  the 

€*8> 


shrewdest  political  wits  his  own  were  an  easy  match, 
but  he  never  allowed  the  unlovely  necessities  of  of- 
fice to  impair  his  native  candour  or  harden  his  native 
tenderness.  Under  every  trial  he  remained  truthful 
and  generous.  With  exceptional  opportunities  for 
discovering  what  human  harshness  and  perfidy  could 
be,  he  never  lost  his  faith  in  human  goodness.  Called 
upon  daily  to  deal  with  complicated  abstractions,  he 
reduced  them  steadily  to  bare  and  intimate  essentials, 
the  larger  figures  of  rhetoric  having  no  attraction  for 
him.  Placed  at  the  head  of  a  great  people,  he  thought 
of  them  always  in  terms  of  individual  men  &  women. 
And  so  he  is  remembered,  after  all  the  smother  has 
passed,  simply  as  the  man  who  saved  the  American 
Union,  and  in  the  process  abolished  slavery.  Even 
those,  if  there  are  any,  who  question  the  ultimate  wis- 
dom of  these  achievements,  cannot  deny  their  great- 
ness. He  is  remembered  also  as  a  man  who,  conduct- 
ing a  nation  through  a  shattering  crisis,  remained 
warm,  accessible,  a  friend  to  anyone  who  cared  to  ask 
for  his  friendship. 

Lincoln  was  a  very  great  man,  and  was  conscious 
of  his  power  and  quality;  but  he  never  behaved  or 
thought  of  himself  as  The  Great  Man.  He  had  come 
through  too  vigilant  a  school  for  that.  The  stories  of 

<J>9  J 


his  solicitude  for  others  are  many.  I  will  tell  one  that 
I  picked  up,  not,  I  think,  told  in  print  before.  Early  in 
the  war  when  he  was  paying  a  visit  to  an  army  hos- 
pital, he  came  across  a  young  soldier  convalescing 
from  wounds.  The  boy  told  him  that  he  was  going 
on  leave  for  a  fortnight,  during  which  he  hoped  to 
marry  a  girl  to  whom  he  was  engaged.  Three  years 
later  a  commanding  officer  called  for  a  volunteer  to 
take  a  dispatch  through  dangerous  country  to  Lin- 
coln at  Washington.  The  same  young  man  offered 
to  go,  and  getting  through  safely  was  admitted  at  the 
White  House.  Lincoln  took  the  envelope  and,  look- 
ing for  a  moment  at  the  messenger,  turned  away  be- 
fore opening  it  and  stood  staring  out  of  the  window, 
searching  his  recolle&ion.  Then  he  turned  again 
with  'Did  you  marry  the  girl?'  That  was  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  in  1 864.  The  conjun&ion 
of  such  grace  with  such  eminence  is  our  clue. 

Lincoln's  power  came  to  its  maturity  in  a  time  of 
war,  and  although  the  course  of  the  struggle  and  the 
issues  involved  have  now  emerged  in  an  outline  up- 
on which  disagreement  is  scarcely  possible,  this  war 
was  in  its  time,  like  all  other  wars,  mired  in  almost 
indescribable  muddle  and  apparent  futility.  The  end 
and  the  means  to  that  end  may  always  have  been 
clear  to  Lincoln,  but  before  the  end  was  reached  he 

€  3°  > 


had  to  lead  a  hundred  discordant  energies  through 
weary  months,  even  years,  of  confusion.  Often  he 
seemed  hardly  to  be  leading  them  at  all.  His  minis- 
ters,  his  generals,  his  political  managers,  the  press — 
among  all  these  were  to  be  found  patriots  who  were 
convinced  that  Lincoln  was  a  fool,and  that  the  prob- 
lem was  how  to  make  his  folly  as  inoperative  as  pos- 
sible. Late  at  night  he  calls  with  his  Secretary  of  State 
on  McClellan,  then  Commander-in-Chief.  McClel- 
lan  is  out.  They  wait,  and  at  length  the  general  re- 
turns, out  of  humour,  hears  that  the  President  is  wait- 
ing for  him,  and  goes  straight  to  bed.  Lincoln  returns 
home,  and  his  Secretary  remonstrates  with  him.  It 
seems  to  Lincoln  not  to  be  a  time  for  'making  points 
of  etiquette  and  personal  dignity.'  He  adds:  'I  will 
hold  McClellan's  horse  if  he  will  win  me  victories.' 
But  casual,  even  vacillating  as  he  may  have  seemed 
in  such  incidents,  Lincoln  all  the  time  was  nursing 
his  resolves  and  consolidating  his  principles.  He  saw 
everyone  who  called  at  the  White  House,  chiefly, 
as  he  said,  because  'Men  moving  only  in  an  official 
circle  are  apt  to  become  merely  official — not  to  say 
arbitrary — in  their  ideas,  and  are  apter  and  apter 
with  each  passing  day  to  forget  that  they  only  hold 
power  in  a  representative  capacity.'  Often  his  visitors 
came  to  join  in  the  chorus  of  disparagement,  but  not 


always.  Mr.  Nathaniel  Wright  Stephenson,  in  his 
admirable  book  on  Lincoln,  tells  us  of  one  who  called: 
'a  large,  fleshy  man  of  a  stern  but  homely  counte- 
nance  and  a  solemn  and  dignified  carriage,  immacu- 
late dress,  swallo  w-tailed  coat,  ruffled  shirt  of  faultless 
fabric,  white  cravat,  and  orange-colored  gloves.'  Look- 
ing at  him  Lincoln  was  somewhat  appalled.  He  ex- 
pected some  formidable  demand. To  his  relief  the  im- 
posing stranger  delivered  a  brief  harangue  on  the 
President's  policy,  closing  with:  'I  have  watched  you 
narrowly  ever  since  your  inauguration.  .  .  As  one 
of  your  constituents  I  now  say  to  you,  "do  in  future 
as  you  damn  please,  and  I  will  support  you/' 


* 


And  what  none  of  his  critics  realised  was  that,  in 
spite  of  their  invedtive,  reinforced  often  by  double- 
dealing,  Lincoln  was  all  the  time  moving  in  his  calm, 
spiritual  deliberation,  doing  as  he  did  damn  please. 
For  there  are  two  characteristics  that  we  have  clearly 
to  realise  if  we  would  understand  Lincoln.  The  first 
is  at  the  very  heart  of  his  essential  greatness.  A  lesson 
that  history  teaches  us  with  unwearying  patience, 
and  one  which  is  yet  unheeded  by  many  a&ive  mem- 
bers of  society,  is  that  the  truly  great  man  is  not  the 
extremist,  however  devoted  his  courage  or  pictur- 
esque his  personality  may  be.  The  rebels  have  their 


honour  in  the  world,  and  rightly.  Their  cause  is  oft- 
en enlightened,  and  they  serve  it  often  with  a  loyalty 
that  is  reckless  of  self-interest,  a  loyalty,  it  may  be 
noted,  which  may  be  no  less  staunch  when  the  cause 
happens  to  be  a  rea&ionary  one.  The  Die-Hards  of 
English  politics  are  no  less  honourably  true  to  a  faith 
than  the  Vengeances  from  the  Clyde.  But  given  the 
admittedly  rare  virtue  of  personal  fearlessness,  this 
kind  of  fanaticism,  whatever  its  purpose,  is  a  far  less 
majestic  thing  in  character  than  the  tenacity  with 
which  the  really  heroic  men  of  the  world  have  pur- 
sued a  moderate  course,  refusing  to  be  intimidated  by 
furies  on  either  side  of  them. 

And  of  the  great  moderates  in  history  (one  might, 
perhaps,  call  them  moderators)  none  is  greater  than 
Lincoln.  His  fixed  aim  from  the  first  in  the  war  was 
to  preserve  the  Union ;  at  a  later  stage,  after  long  med- 
itation, he  further  declared  for  abolition,  with  reason- 
able terms  of  compensation.  From  these  two  pur- 
poses nothing  could  seduce  him,  but  he  would  at  no 
time  allow  his  intentions  to  be  complicated  by  the 
demands  of  extremists  in  any  party.  He  was  deaf  alike 
to  the  Vindi&ives  and  the  Pacifists,  who  in  their  dif- 
ferent ways  were  trying  to  stampede  him.  The  Vin- 
di&ives  were  all  for  destroying  the  South  by  the  im- 
position of  extreme  political  and  material  penalties. 


Lincoln  would  have  none  of  it.  Let  the  South  come 
back  to  the  Union,  and  let  it  admit  that  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  had  been  discredited,  and  the  old  rela- 
tions should  be  renewed  as  though  the  war  had  never 
happened.  Towards  the  Pacifists  he  was  equally  firm. 
No  man  was  ever  more  pacific  in  nature  than  Lincoln 
himself,  but  no  appeals  to  his  almost  agonisingly  sen- 
sitive humanity  could  weaken  his  resolve  until  the 
integrity  of  the  Union  had  been  established,  as  he 
hoped,  beyond  the  possibility  of  further  attack. 


* 


The  other  characteristic  of  which  we  speak  is  Lin- 
coln's loneliness  of  mind,  a  theme  worthy  of  the 
Greek  tragedians.  In  administrative  affairs  he  was 
anxious,  even  at  times  unduly  anxious,  for  advice, 
and  in  the  routine  of  office  he  could  sometimes  be  a 
little  careless  in  the  choice  of  deputies.  But  in  the  for- 
mation of  principles  he  consulted  nobody.  When  a 
decision  involving  fundamental  principle  had  to  be 
made,  the  period  of  Lincoln's  speculation  would  be 
a  long  one,  and  while  it  lasted  his  most  intimate  as- 
sociates could  tell  nothing  of  what  he  was  thinking. 
Then  suddenly  his  intentions  would  be  stated  in  un- 
equivocal terms,  and  that  was  an  end  of  the  matter. 
This  gave  easy  play  to  detra&ors,  and  the  opportuni- 
ties were  freely  and  not  always  scrupulously  taken. 

€34> 


But  Lincoln's  justification  was  that  his  conclusions 
truly  were  founded  upon  principles,  and  that  his  in- 
telle&ual  understanding  of  principles  was,  in  the 
sphere  of  adion,  the  finest  in  the  country.  It  is  a  justi- 
fication that  has  now  made  a  noble  and  durable  im- 
pression upon  mankind,  and  America  has  given  a 
hero  to  the  world. 


4- 


It  is  sometimes  said  that  Lincoln's  story  would 
have  been  less  memorable  had  it  not  been  so  sudden- 
ly and  so  violently  closed.  Such  surmise  profits  no- 
body. There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  had  he  lived 
Lincoln  would  not  have  brought  to  reconstruction 
the  strong  and  lovely  qualities  that  he  had  exercised 
in  war.  History  rightly  takes  no  note  of  events  that 
were  and  must  remain  unborn.  And  the  imagination 
of  men,  fixed  on  reality,  disregards  them  also.  Our 
delight  in  the  story  of  our  race  is  not  to  wonder  aim- 
lessly what  might  have  been,  but  to  realise  the  true 
significance  of  what  was.  To  the  story  of  Lincoln  we 
could  wish  to  add  nothing,  since  nothing  could  en- 
rich or  dignify  it;  and  that  something  of  its  splendour 
might  have  been  lost  in  other  circumstances  does  not 
trouble  our  delight. 


/ 


